Terraria: Otherworld cancelled after three years in development

Terraria: Otherworld cancelled after three years in development

Terraria’s strategic spin-off, Otherworld, has been plagued by development issues nearly from the start. It was announced in 2015, had its development rebooted in 2016, and was handed off to a new studio in 2017. Now, after (at least) three years in development, Otherworld has been cancelled.

On the official forums, publishers Re-Logic say “Our team has a clear vision for this game – one that we shared with all of you with much shared excitement – and, in spite of all of our efforts, the current state of the game remains equal parts far from that vision and beyond behind schedule from our initial planning when we shared Otherworld with all of you three years ago.”

To that end, they “have made the decision to terminate development of Terraria: Otherworld. We sincerely thank both of our external development teams for their hard work on the game, but at some point, we have to be honest with ourselves and realize that Otherworld simply is never going to reach its potential in any sort of reasonable time or fashion.”

While Terraria: Otherworld wasn’t close to meeting its own vision, progress was made during that development time, and ideas from the game are “very likely” to be implemented in future titles. Re-Logic now plan to handle “core development” of future games in-house rather than outsourcing them. They also plan to avoid announcing games so early in the future.

While Otherworld is done for, development continues on Terraria leading up to the 1.3.6 patch. Terraria 2 has been teased in various capacities for years, but there are still no concrete details on its status.

Replies 117

What would you like? For them to continue the development while completely be unsure about the vision of their game, where on its release it will turn into a pile of dog shit that barely makes a dent in what made the original Terraria enjoyable?

Or do you like for them to be aware of the limits of their budget and production, and know when to call it quits when the game isn't going to exceed any expectation, and possibly avoiding a major disappointment?

Better to be the latter, so they can focus on projects that they are actually confident in delivering them, instead of wasting their time with production issues that will most likely result in a half assed game.